Our government agencies need the ability to develop their own software. Keeping them from doing so prevents them from providing vital services that we all pay for. No story makes the case for this capability better than that of Jim Gray.
Gray was a technology pioneer who, during a sailing trip in early 2007, disappeared off the coast of San Francisco. The Coast Guard searched for him for three days and could not find him. They called off their search.
But a group of determined people kept looking. They had imagery satellites take fresh pictures of a swatch of sea outside the San Francisco Bay. If Gray was out there, he and his boat were now on film. But they were left with hundreds of photos, each big enough to cover a wall. A handful of people could never review the images in time to save Gray. So, a team of software developers converted those large photos into lots of smaller ones, which were then posted to a website where the public could review them. Clicking on a possible sighting sent a report to a flight crew, which then searched the area in question. Noticing that the images were blurry, another team of programmers contributed code that automatically sharpened the images. The entire system was created from scratch in just a few days. And it was done without any help from the government.
This effort was coordinated entirely by private citizens with the help of publicly available technology. Though he was never found, Gray inspired the largest collaborative search party in history. Twelve thousand private citizens reviewed more than half a million images. It is an amazing story of teamwork and ingenuity. Inspiring. Soul-stirring.
But also frustrating: why didn’t our government do this the moment Gray was reported missing?
It is tempting to use this story as a case for more self-governance: if the public can do it and the government can’t, why not go with it? Instead of equipping the government to do what private citizens already can, let’s just do their jobs for them from our home computers.
The Web has made it simple to form ad hoc groups and coordinate their actions, and we will continue to see cases where such groups fill the government’s shoes. But such cases will not be the norm. Our populace cannot govern itself just yet. There are too many critical functions that we cannot yet take over. We do not have battleships. We cannot run elections. Some private citizens guard our borders, but that doesn’t mean they should.
We will need a formal government for the foreseeable future. Our government should be at least as capable as a quickly organized group of virtual volunteers. It will certainly have the budget for it.